Has the Dalai Lama’s lifelong commitment to peace preserved Tibetan identity – or facilitated its erasure by China?

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Kapil Komireddi is the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India.

Days before he turned 90 on July 6, the Dalai Lama made what may be the last – and most consequential – announcement of his life when he declared that his successor will be chosen by a trust he himself established. It was a defiant act of resistance against Beijing’s decades-long plan to appoint a puppet Dalai Lama after his death.

But as the world’s most recognizable advocate of non-violence makes what may be his final stand, a painful question comes into relief: Has his lifelong commitment to peace preserved Tibetan identity – or facilitated its erasure under China’s authoritarian boot?

The myth of Tibet as a tranquil idyll is powerful; it also bears no relationship to reality. “In war-torn Asia, Tibetans have practised non-violence for over a thousand years,” declares the opening of Kundun, Martin Scorsese’s 1997 epic biopic.

But Tibet’s history is grittier. In the 8th century, it was a formidable empire. China, in the words of an inscription found in the Tang Chinese capital of Chang’an, “shivered with fear” at its mention. By the time Mao’s Red Army invaded in 1950, however, Tibet had declined into an isolated hagiarchy ill-equipped to resist modern power. The 15-year-old Dalai Lama, hastily confirmed as Tibet’s supreme leader, watched helplessly as monasteries were destroyed, monks executed, and peaceful protesters massacred.

Fleeing to India in 1959, the Dalai Lama began a lifelong campaign to preserve Tibetan culture through non-violence. The force of his example turned him into an international icon – courted by film stars, celebrated by Western leaders and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His celebrity, however, concealed a major paradox: while his campaign kept the cause of Tibet alive abroad, it failed to halt the destruction of the Tibetan homeland by China.

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Today, Tibet is the world’s largest and least acknowledged colony. In Beijing’s lexicon, it is “Water Tower Number One” – a source of prized minerals and hydropower. For longer than half a century, the region has been ecologically ravaged, culturally sterilized and politically neutered. Human Rights Watch and the Tibet Action Institute have documented massive forced relocations of Tibetan villagers into sterile housing blocks and the forced Sinicization of children – some as young as four –through mandatory boarding schools.

The next generation of Tibetans may not possess the language to communicate with their elders. China is expunging from Tibetans’ mental make-up their sense of who they are.

The Dalai Lama has always exhorted his people to reject violence – even in moments when a word from him might have triggered all-out resistance. In 2008, for instance, when an uprising erupted in Tibet, it was his appeal for peace that helped pacify the protesters. Despite this, China insists he is a “terrorist.”

Hundreds of Tibetans have set their own bodies on fire in the hope of rousing the world. Their sacrifices have barely registered globally. Imagine if they had chosen violence instead – would the world then debate the “root causes” of Tibetan unrest? Would outsiders march in solidarity with them?

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Tibetans have no tangible political achievement to show for all their pacifism. In 1988, the Dalai Lama relinquished his demand for independence and offered to settle for genuine autonomy within China. Even that concession did not slow down Chinese repression. Tibet remains, alongside Xinjiang, the most tightly controlled region under Chinese rule.

The upshot of all is that young Tibetans, especially in exile, are growing increasingly skeptical of the utility of non-violence. Their reverence for the Dalai Lama remains undimmed – if anything, it has increased as His Holiness has aged – but their faith in his methods is diminishing.

Western support has proven purely transactional. Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, during which he exalted Chairman Mao – a man responsible for more death than any 20th century leader – and terminated all covert aid to Tibet, was an early intimation of what was to come. By embracing Mao’s regime, Mr. Nixon effectively normalized its atrocities. By 1992, the Financial Times had no compunctions about garlanding Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor, as its “Person of the Year” –three years after he oversaw the Tiananmen Square massacre in which 10,000 pro-democracy protesters were butchered.

The self-serving consensus in Washington – that trade would lead to China’s political liberalization – has backfired. Today, it is Western authors who self-censor for the privilege of being published in China, Hollywood edits its films to please the People’s Republic, and governments dodge the Dalai Lama to avoid Beijing’s wrath.

Even India, home to the largest concentration of the 150,000-strong Tibetan diaspora, treads cravenly. It was long a tradition in India to perform mass arrests of Tibetans under colonial-era laws whenever a senior Chinese dignitary visited the country. Last week, Narendra Modi’s government, for all its bellicose nationalism, went a step further and refused to give its imprimatur to the Dalai Lama’s right to choose his successor. Ordinary Indians’ profoundly reverential attitude to the His Holiness – the face of a faith that originated in their land – has so far deterred New Delhi from stamping on his followers. It is terrifying to contemplate their fate once he is no more.

It was perhaps partly with this in mind that the Dalai Lama spent the past two decades preparing for life after him. He has devolved political power to a democratically elected government in exile, vivisecting faith from state within the Tibetan movement. In 1995, Beijing abducted the Panchen Lama – the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism – just days after the Dalai Lama recognized him. He was six years old. China then installed its own proxy in his place. That experience no doubt convinced the Dalai Lama to settle the question of his succession during his lifetime. By explicating the process of his own reincarnation, he has ringfenced, to the best of his ability, an institution that has sustained the Tibetan identity for centuries.

But will it be enough?

Unless powers like the United States and India – and Canada, which once granted a warm welcome to Tibetan refugees after a direct appeal by His Holiness – take a firm position against Beijing’s brazen co-option of Tibetan Buddhism, the highest seat in Tibetan Buddhism may become another weapon of control in the CCP’s arsenal. And when he is gone, Tibetans, rather than liberation, will be left with a haunting question: what did decades of self-sacrificing restraint truly accomplish?

The world venerates non-violence – but too often only as a performance. It extols pacifists after they are safely dead. Tibetans have tried to do something almost without a parallel in our age: fight oppression without mimicking the cruelty of the oppressors. They deserve more than ovations. They deserve action.